Lynda Batchelor (September 20th) presumably accepts the Christians' claim that their religion is not only a matter of faith but is also historically based.

That being so, it is necessary for enquiring persons to evaluate the truth or otherwise of the miracle stories in much the same way as we try to ascertain the authenticity of any supposed historical fact. Part of this evaluation process must be by reference to common experience; if I am told that Jesus preached to five thousnad people then I require very little evidence to persuade me that he actually did so - preaching to huge congregations is a well known possibility.

If I am told that he fed those five thousand people, sufficiently, on a relatively minute quantity of loaves and fishes then I have to say two things: 1) the mere fact that I cannot understand how Jesus could have done it does not, of itself, make the story false. 2) the fact that the story is (considering common everyday experience) an improbable one, does make me require a huge volume of cast-iron evidence that it did happen if I am to believe it. Fragmetary accounts written many years after the alleged events are certainly evidence but they are scarcely sufficient evidence, I think. We can believe the stories or not, as we see fit, on our own assessment of the evidence and I do not decry anyone's opinion that the evidence is sufficient for that person's satisfaction.

The central point I was trying to make is that morality is too important to be based upon beliefs that must be, to put it mildly, open to question. It must be based upon the common sense realisation that we are social beings and that there are imperatives - both compulsions and constraints upon each of us - that flow from that obvious fact.

To base morality upon events that may not have happened is to base it upon a quicksand. The danger is that if we cannot accept the authenticity of the events then, logically, we must reject morality. This, we should not do and believers' insistence that morality depends upon faith has done much harm to moral performance .

Precepts such as 'love thy neighbour as thyself' are too valuable to be based upon, for example, an implausible account of a lakeside picnic of two thousnad years ago. 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' is always good; in, say, today's Yugoslavia it is a matter of life and death. I hope the Orthodox and Catholic priests there are saying it; I fear they are not.